


I Only Know I Love You Like I Do, I Do, I Do

by luninosity



Series: Oh Boy! Or, Life's Better With A Buddy Holly Soundtrack [13]
Category: British Actor RPF, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Comfort, Comic-Con, Determined James, Implied Sexual Content, Love, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Protective Michael, Protectiveness, minor though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 21:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1362991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Comic-Con’s not the best place for someone who has nightmares. Fortunately, James also has Michael. Always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Only Know I Love You Like I Do, I Do, I Do

**Author's Note:**

> At least four different people asked at various points how James in this ’verse would cope with the crowds and costumes and unfamiliar locations at Comic-Con. The answer is: with a lot of strength, both his own and Michael’s. (I totally failed to make note of who all those people were, who asked. If you were one of them, this is for you.)
> 
> Title, opening, and closing lines from Buddy Holly’s “You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care).”
> 
> **Possible warning just in case** for James having nightmares and the beginnings of a minor panic attack around costumed crowds, but they get back to the hotel room and there is cuddling and comfort.

  
_you don’t like crazy music_   
_you don’t like rockin’ bands_   
_you just wanna go to a movie show_   
_and sit there holding hands_   
_you’re so square_   
_baby I don’t care…_

  
Comic-Con. San Diego. Sea-salt air and scorching sunlight. Southern California, in a too-hot summer.  
  
Michael’s not minded the sizzle of these days and nights. He can run around in a loose-necked t-shirt and light fabrics if he has to. He can adapt, and the sun’s kind of nice—no match for emerald-mist Irish hills, obviously, but a pleasant change for these few days.  
  
What matters more is that James is warm. James, who never _is_ properly warm, who wraps himself up in all the layers known to man and still gets blue-tinged fingertips and shivers in icy winter air, real uncontrollable full-body tremors. Michael always panics a little, on those days, and throws every quilt and fuzzy sweater in the flat in his direction. Pairs of woolly socks and endless mugs of tea. Heater turned up to full.  
  
Here, on this summer-saturated San Diego day, James is walking around in jeans and only two layers of shirt, short sleeves and all, and so: Michael’s happy.  
  
Also permanently a bit paranoid—what if the air conditioning’s turned up too high in a conference room?—but nevertheless. Mostly happy.  
  
He’s happy for other reasons as well. He watches James smile and sign autographs for fans; watches James bounce around the convention floor, giddy as Magneto in a hardware store. He trails James to the Walking Dead booth and leans against a support pillar and finds himself smiling as James takes poorly-angled self-snapshots with Norman Reedus and engages in a rapid-fire discussion about the best zombie-fighting tactics. Happy. Yes.  
  
James runs over to drag him into photos as well. Pauses, eyebrows curious. “You’re being awfully quiet, today. Not as fun for you?”  
  
“I am having fun.” Michael takes his hands and kisses them, one at a time. “I’m watching you.”  
  
“You—”  
  
“I’ve done Comic-Con before. You’ve never done it.” He squeezes both hands in his. “I _like_ watching you.” True, every word. It’s not the kind of brilliant thunderous crashing joy that rushed all through his bones the first time James kissed him, no. It’s softer and sweeter, as if the sunlight’s made a home inside his bones, even here indoors on the crowded convention floor. Radiant, everywhere.  
  
James looks at his face, at his eyes. Smiles back, slowly. “I love you.”  
  
“Love you. And your X-Men shirt.”  
  
“My X-Men shirt is awesome, thank you very much. Lunch? Mexican? Chipotle spice?”  
  
“Anything you want,” Michael says, heart in the words; so they do. And so: Michael’s happy.  
  
All the happy’s for one other unspoken reason, a reason no one but James knows. It’s been two days—three, technically, since they’d arrived the evening before. It’s been two nights.   
  
Two nights in which they’ve slept curled together like spoons in a pillow-topped hotel bed; two nights of laughter and bare freckled skin moving beneath him and ecstatic tiny cries and gasps and moans. Two nights of dreamless contented sleep. Even here. Even here in a bed that’s not theirs, in an unfamiliar place with ominous unknown shadows.  
  
The first night away from home’s often okay. James is usually tired enough from travel and excited enough about the new location to sleep without disturbances. Michael’s astonished, and a little afraid to believe, that they’ve made it two nights in a row.  
  
The second night’s normally worse. Making up for the first with a vengeance.  
  
He knows how those nights go. Has been awakened, drifting on the verge of sleep, by jagged shallow whimpers, fearful pants, James trembling against him. The noises of a person trying not to make any noise at all, in dreams. The sounds of someone drowning in terror.  
  
It’s the same dream, always. There’s no reason for it that James can recall, or at least he says so, and Michael believes him, believes those shattered sapphire eyes when they find his in the night, heartbreakingly lost and full of bruises like dull cracks at the heart of the blue, wounds in the gemstones.   
  
James had tried to claim early on that it wasn’t even a proper nightmare, not worthy of the name. Michael’d been shocked, cold-spear right through the core of him, at the description. Had said frantically, hands clinging to all the starkly painted freckles, no. No, you’re wrong, that’s horrific, James, that’s awful, did someone ever—is this something that—has anyone ever—  
  
And James had said he didn’t think so. Nothing he can remember. Only that tall inhuman faceless shape in the dream, standing beside the bed. Watching. And that creeping certainty of dread, the knowledge that at some point James would have to move or open eyes or breathe, some indication of wakefulness, and then—  
  
But it _hasn’t_ happened. Not here.   
  
Michael’s trying not to have hope. They’ve not done anything new. Nothing’s changed that he knows about. And just wanting the reprieve to be real, wanting all the nights he’s pulled James close and sung James to sleep and promised to stand guard to have finally added up…  
  
Wanting doesn’t make it true.  
  
But it is true, for now, for this moment.  
  
And it _is_ a good day. Both of the days, so far, have been. James had held him and kissed him and tumbled him into bed, the day before; had gotten him to smile and find equilibrium all over again after Sir Ian’s teasing-turned-cruel moment, after Michael’s flinch at the words. We don’t need you, Ian’d said, in this film; I could play all the parts, if anyone asked me.  
  
James had understood. James always understands. James knows about emotions bright and dark and ugly and diamond-edged. Had known, as James always seems to know, exactly what to say.  
  
The first time they’d kissed had been because of James. Because Michael’d been kneeling in damp sand for a scene, _that_ scene, and begging on camera for James to stay at his side while blue eyes filled with pain, and he’d known that those words hadn’t been Erik’s to Charles, or not wholly. He was himself, Michael, in that moment, and he couldn’t witness James being shot on that beach without his own heart breaking.  
  
James had taken his hand, climbing out of the sand, and hadn’t let go. Had murmured softly, “your room, after we change,” and Michael’d only nodded, mute and shaking.   
  
James had come over with expensive scotch and endless dark blue eyes and no shoes, only sock-fuzzy toes under too-long jeans, and had poured him a drink and sat with him on the bed, fitting their shoulders together comfortably. After about half an hour of cheerful running commentary on the Food Network’s current pastry competition, had looked at him thoughtfully, and then leaned in, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and kissed him soundly.  
  
Michael’d never been kissed like that in his life.   
  
If he’d thought about it, of course he’d’ve logically guessed that James would be a good kisser, generous and playful and gently teasing and exactly as forceful as his partner wanted him to be. And James is all that, every time; and even more.   
  
He’d touched his mouth after they’d parted, astounded, feeling the sparks along his spine and all the way to his toes. James had blushed—and since when did James blush?—and said, “Well, I wanted to, and I thought maybe you did too,” and Michael’d only been able to plead, “More?” James had laughed, and obliged.  
  
All good days. So many of them. Then, and now. And that miniscule fire-flare of hope leaps up in his chest, unbidden.  
  
The day goes on being good through lunch, through James looking plaintively at churros and talking Michael into buying one and then performing frighteningly suggestive actions with lips and tongue. Fried sugary dough really shouldn’t look that erotic, Michael decides, and is forced to yank James into the nearest men’s room for a hurried but satisfactory interlude. They’re triumphantly not more than two minutes late for the next scheduled interview.   
  
Well. Maybe five.  
  
The room after that’s a small one, though. Small, and overcrowded, with lots of costumed bodies, lots of bodies in masks and disguises, true faces unknown. The air-conditioning’s on full arctic to compensate. James starts shivering within ten seconds.  
  
“Should I ask them for a blanket? Where’s your coat?”  
  
“Back in our hotel room, making friends with a chair. I’m fine, I’m just cold…even with all this extra hair…”  
  
“I like your extra hair.” He does. They both enjoy him tugging—not too hard—on it. “Here.” He puts an arm around James. The collected fans and interviewers coo.  
  
This session’s an exclusive one, reserved for certain attendees who’ve either won a spot by knowing dangerous amounts of X-Men trivia or paid rather hefty sums of money. There’re also reporters and photographers, clicking away. Clicking away very close. Too close. James smiles while walking in, but the smile’s wobbly, though no one but Michael will be allowed to see.   
  
Michael, waiting the required half-minute—too long—for his own introduction, thinks of James at parties, of James on film sets. The way that James will laugh and tease and accept offered vodka shots and join in ridiculous games for one hour, two hours, maybe more on occasion. The way that James will never quite be there the moment after that, slipping into the kitchen to start the washing-up, unobtrusively checking on passed-out guests in the toilets, vanishing out to a balcony or a patio without drawing any attention along the way.  
  
Michael’s found him sitting, knees pulled up and arms wrapped around legs, in the grass behind his own on-set trailer. Behind _Michael’s_ trailer. In the library of someone else’s house, trailing fingertips over books, wistful and quiet. On back steps, looking up at stars.  
  
He’d asked once whether James minds being found. Whether James would rather be truly alone, not even Michael, for those pensive minutes.  
  
No, James had said, and taken his hand, the two of them sitting together on night-damp wood steps under new springtime moonbeams. No. You always find me. I think I like knowing you always will.  
  
They’ve been doing panels and interviews and meet-and-greets since seven this morning. They’ve done it all already, morning to night, the day before.  
  
When he sits down, he moves a knee over, obscured from sight by the table, and presses it against James’s. James actually jumps, albeit not enough to be noticed by any of the audience or the cameras. But that’s not good. James usually likes being touched, and usually pays more attention to Michael—which sounds arrogant, but it’s a truth, and important right now—than that. But James is staring out at the sea of bodies, and the muscle in his jaw clenches briefly, tightening.  
  
He does turn more toward Michael, though, and links their legs together under the table. Encouraging, maybe. Michael hopes.  
  
The fans are considerate and intelligent and respectful, and the questions’re great ones, for the most part impressively original and knowledgeable. They range from marvelously entertaining—someone asks James what Charles Xavier would think of her Charles cosplay, and James grins and says “Groovy,” and she jumps up and down in delight—to genuinely clever, like the query about how Erik and Charles respectively handle the ethics of time travel and altering the past. James is enthusiastic and articulate and insightful as always. Michael does his best to keep up.  
  
One of the questions involves the rumor that it’s James who gets the one f-bomb of the upcoming movie. James leans into the microphone, smiles, and says, “I’m not sure I should answer that, but I definitely never mind using the word, sorry, were you hoping that’d be a yes?” and at the nod adds, “oh, so you all just really want me to say the word fuck?” and the room thunders with cheers and wolf-whistles and applause. Michael leans over and murmurs, “You know I love you saying the word fuck,” because he does, that word in that accent sends tingles up and down his spine every single time; and _then_ he realizes that James’s microphone has picked up every word.  
  
James starts laughing. The fans cheer even more loudly. Sir Ian McKellen says, “Yes, by all means, do go on,” and Michael throws a half-empty water bottle at that end of the table, and picks up James’s hand and kisses each finger, one by one.  
  
And Michael feels like he’s succeeded, for that single coruscating moment. James is laughing, and those fingers’re warm against his lips.  
  
The success doesn’t last. James starts shivering again. It’s less from cold this time. More from the bodies, all the bodies, especially the tall slender ones dressed in black with face masks on. James whispers almost inaudibly, “They’re from _Doctor Who_ ,” and Michael’s about to whisper back “I know” and then figures out that James is trying valiantly to remind himself of that fact.  
  
When he puts his other hand atop that freckled one, cradling James’s hand between both of his, he can feel the pulse fluttering beneath the thin skin of that beloved wrist. Too fast.  
  
The panel ends—it’s a short one—and they’re meant to leave first, supposed to get up and go. Sir Ian and Sir Patrick are on their feet. Bryan Singer waves and runs out the wrong door. One of the volunteer assistants chases after him.  
  
James takes a deep breath. Otherwise, doesn’t move.  
  
Michael takes a breath, too. Shoves the table back with a hip, inserts himself between James and the audience, letting them only see his back. James stays very, very still, as if any movement might break out in some unanticipated way and become flight, or panic, or collapse.  
  
“I’m all right.” James is in fact not trembling, but he’s only not trembling because James is incredibly stubborn and equally incredibly good at controlling physical cues. The shakiness is all in his eyes, when he looks up. “It’s stupid, I know, I know it’s not—I’m all right, I’ll be fuckin’ all right, give me a second.”  
  
“I love you,” Michael says, being a barricade, being a handwarmer, being whatever James needs. “Whenever you’re ready.”  
  
“Now,” James says, “or I’m not getting up at all,” and shoves himself to his feet in one abrupt desperate fluid motion, and waves at the crowd, and leans into Michael’s arm as it goes around his shoulders.  
  
James is the bravest person Michael’s ever met. The best person. The most remarkable person. Michael keeps the arm around him, and attempts to rub heat back into icy freckles without giving away how badly the freckles need it.  
  
Outside isn’t much better. More costumed figures ebb and flow around them. Bodies run up amid security guards and shout for autographs. James does an admirable job—an unbelievable, inconceivable job—of smiling and being polite. He doesn’t talk much. Michael’s growing more and more afraid with every step.  
  
One body—a long lean body shrouded in black—ducks past security and taps James on the shoulder that’s not leaning against Michael. James half-turns. Breathes in, sharply.   
  
Their security yanks the man away, and Michael pulls James in closer—so much shocked-white skin, oh God—and tries desperately to be support without looking like it, without a dozen tabloid stories about James passing out in his arms in the middle of the industry’s biggest convention. James stays upright but starts visibly shaking, no longer caring whether people see. Michael swears in multiple languages, but not aloud. Only in his head.   
  
“Are we done,” he demands of the security person, and she confers briefly with the volunteer assistant and nods. “You don’t have anything else scheduled today. Maybe one of the parties, later?”  
  
“Maybe,” Michael says, as James closes those spectacular eyes, shutting out the world, and then opens them again. Closing them must’ve been worse. He can only imagine. “Hotel for now. We’re kind of tired, if that’s, y’know, okay?”  
  
“Sure,” the girl chirps, and chatters into her walkie-talkie, and by the time they get to the door there’s a car and the car takes them to the hotel and the hotel elevator takes them to the room, and James hasn’t spoken at all and that’s the most terrifying part of all, James who loves words and storytelling and telling Michael everything now being silenced.  
  
He pushes open the door with his spare hand. James takes one step inside and then wobbles on his feet. “Michael—”  
  
“Right here—here, come here, I’ve got you, you’re okay, I’m here—”  
  
He gets them both over to the bed—it’s closer and larger than the chair—and settled into a heap of inquisitive pillows, trying not to let the alarm take over, trying to be strong. James isn’t crying, but doesn’t seem able to breathe well, every inhale struggling, every exhale shattered.   
  
“James,” he pleads, running hands over strong shoulders, broad back, quivering hair, “I’m here, you’re here, just us, you and me, we’re back in the room, we’re safe, you’re safe, I won’t let anyone near you, I fucking swear, I’ll keep you safe, I promise, I love you,” and James nods but can’t answer.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Michael tries, holding him, holding on, “I know this was your first Comic-Con, it’s not mine, I know what it’s like and I—I’m sorry, I should’ve thought, I should’ve done better, been better prepared or—I’m sorry—no, that’s not what you need, is it? I know you were loving it here. You even got to talk to someone who knew all the captains of the U.S.S. _Enterprise_ , and I’ve no idea who Rachel Garrett is but you’ll tell me sometime, right, and also explain why the Klingon _Hamlet_ ’s such a big deal, and is there a Klingon _Macbeth_ , maybe?” And James laughs, one short choked-off spurt of crumpled amusement.  
  
“Okay,” Michael says, “you’re okay, we’re okay, you’re amazing,” and James manages a full deep breath at that, air entering lungs and released slowly.  
  
“…I’m okay. Or. Not okay, but. I’m all right. I love you.”  
  
“And I love you. Look at me for a second?” He scrutinizes sapphire eyes. They’re huge and dark with anguish, but regaining focus with every successful acquisition of oxygen. “How’re you feeling? Need anything? Water?”  
  
James shakes his head. “Just you.”  
  
“You have me.”  
  
“I know.” One cinnamon-sprinkled hand reaches up, curls around Michael’s wrist, where Michael’s got arms around him. “I know. I—thank you.”  
  
Michael sighs. Tips their heads together. “You don’t have to say that. I should’ve done more. For you.”  
  
“Nothing you could’ve done.” James relaxes a bit more, tension ebbing in the aftermath, stress lingering but contained by the shield-wall of Michael’s arms. “You didn’t pick the room for that panel, and you can’t keep fans from wanting to say hello. I knew, too. That I’m not—that this isn’t the best place for—and so much for feeling optimistic. After last night.”  
  
“Oh,” Michael says, and kisses him, trying to infuse the contact with every drop of the emotion in his heart, every last reflection of love and awe and reverence and hope and loyalty, commitment to James, for James, wholeheartedly, forever. James kisses him back, but there’s an underlying sadness, a resignation, that quivers painfully in Michael’s chest. It’s an apology, the way that James is kissing him: an apology, and defeat.  
  
“Tonight,” James says, voice like faded battlefield flags, shredded and muddied and left in the rain, “won’t be a vast amount of fun, I’m guessing,” and Michael’s chest aches even more. The bed tries its hardest to cradle them in pillow-topped compassion: not enough. The Southern California air’s suffused with sunshine, as the world reaches out to envelop lonely freckles in blankets of gold.   
  
“I don’t know,” he says back, and rests a hand on the side of James’s face, supporting pale skin and dark hair and the sweep of forlorn eyelashes when James closes his eyes. “I always have fun sleeping with you.”  
  
James huffs a half-amused breath into the afternoon. “I didn’t mean that.”  
  
“I know. But it’s true. That, and also—James, I’ll never not want to sleep beside you. I want to be here. I  love you. I’d choose to be here all over again, if anyone, y’know, asked. I _am_ choosing you. And last night—I was hoping you’d be sort of okay, if you could, if you were fine—”  
  
“Clearly I’m not.”  
  
“No…but, James, it doesn’t matter.” He leans in. Nudges James’s nose with his own. “I _was_ hoping for that. I know you were too. But that’s all it was, I didn’t expect it, I was—it would’ve been phenomenal if you were, but I don’t need that, we don’t need that, we’re not trying to sort of fix you or—you’re not broken, you make me smile when I need to smile and you always know when I need to smile and so, um, maybe fun isn’t the right word, but it is anyway, because I’m here and you’re here and we’re sort of winning?”  
  
James blinks. Twice.   
  
“I’ll make you coffee if you want. Because I want to. White chocolate with key-lime syrup?”  
  
James starts crying, which is not an improvement. Michael flings both arms around him. “Sorry, sorry, um, raspberry? Peppermint? Coconut caramel?”  
  
“I love you,” James says, or that’s what it sounds like through the tears and Michael’s shoulder. “So much. So fuckin’ much. Please stay here, please hold me—”  
  
“Always,” Michael says. “Always.”  
  
So they do. The afternoon burns goldenly toward sunset; Michael rubs James’s back and gets up once to make coffee—key-lime white chocolate mocha after all—and once to grab tissues. James doesn’t try to thank him again, only looks up and summons a tentative crooked smile, and that’s everything Michael’s heart needs to mend all its cracks, right then and there.  
  
Sir Patrick calls to ask if they’re still on for dinner. Michael looks at James; James hesitates, bites his lip. Michael says, “Hang on,” and covers the speaker with a hand. “I don’t mind saying no to him if you don’t.”  
  
“I want to, though…” James takes a deep breath. “Can we do it here? Or their room? At least someplace private?”  
  
Michael takes his hand. Gets back on the phone.  
  
Ian and Patrick show up with cheerful grins and multiple bottles of expensive wine and tequila and a Captain Picard action figure that Patrick’s bought from someone on the convention floor—“Look, my arms move! I’m poseable!”—and now hands over to James. “Here, I’ve even signed it for you.”  
  
“Yes,” Ian says, “because that’s precisely what he wants, darling, a miniature you constantly living in their flat,” and Patrick opens his mouth and James jumps in with, “Well, actually…” Michael says, “We might have to talk about this,” and gets the laugh.  
  
They order room service—James has an ongoing love affair with authentic Mexican cuisine, and Ian and Patrick will eat quite literally anything—and while James and Patrick embark on some highly technical debate involving Borg technology and the physical sensation of the assimilation process, Ian comes over to where Michael’s opening the wine and says, quietly, “Is he all right?”  
  
Michael sets down the bottle, just as quietly. Looks at the countertop: corkscrew, empty glasses waiting to be filled, his own hands. “He’s…extraordinary. I can’t even—I don’t know how he does it. I love him. He amazes me.”  
  
Ian nods. Doesn’t push. Only says, “Whatever you need, all right? Call us, any time. Day or night.”  
  
And Michael’s expression must give away everything he’s feeling, because Ian pats him on the shoulder, and then opts to hug him on top of that. Michael tries not to lean on the hug too much, but then just gives up and does anyway.  
  
Ian pats his shoulder again, letting go. “Better?”  
  
Michael breathes out, slowly. “Yes. Thanks.”  
  
“I did say anything. Were you planning to pour that, or simply ogle it?”  
  
And Michael has to laugh. And pours.  
  
James relaxes even more, gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, throughout dinner. Wine and sizzling fajita spice. Margaritas and conversation that swings from hobbits to classic rock to favorite Shakespearean comedies. The welcome spreads out, imbuing the walls and the table and even the hotel-room carpet, under sock-clad toes, with strength. Friends, and James’s hand finding Michael’s under the table, fingers meeting and lacing together.  
  
Patrick and Ian get up to wander off to Hugh Jackman’s afterparty. James gets up, too. “Wait, hang on.”  
  
“If you want us to stay,” Patrick starts, and James shakes his head, grabs a sweater out of the closet, glances at Michael, grins. “We can come. Not for too long. But we did tell him we would, yesterday.”  
  
“James,” Michael says, and James looks up at him, eyes infinite determined blue. The light on a sword-blade, raised at twilight. Resolve. Not giving up the fight.  
  
“I love you,” Michael tells him, and James goes faintly pink and ducks into the bathroom, coming out with layers of fluffy sweaters as armor against cold literal and metaphorical, hair adorably rumpled, hasty splashes of water glittering in eyelashes.   
  
They hold hands in the elevator. Ian and Patrick make parentally approving noises at this public display of affection; James tosses them a wicked smile and stretches up to nibble on Michael’s ear. Ian and Patrick immediately take this as a challenge, and when the elevator doors open, the unsuspecting hotel maid on the other side drops her armful of towels. James helps her pick them up. Of course.  
  
Hugh’s party’s fabulous, as expected. Music, dancing, even more drinks. Michael and his co-conspirators ensure that James is never left alone, even when Michael’s dragged behind the bar and forced to create X-Men themed martinis for his tipsy co-stars. Sir Patrick and Sir Ian hover on each side of blue eyes with impressive tenacity. Michael suspects they’re having fun playing bodyguard for the night.  
  
There _are_ a lot of people, many of them costumed; and James does become quieter, more withdrawn, after an hour or so. He catches Michael’s eye; Michael instantly ducks out from behind the bar, ignores the chorus of disappointed noises, and swoops down and pulls James into a kiss in front of all the eyes, heartfelt and provocative and profound. It’s a claim and a banner and a proclamation and a reaffirmation: he belongs to James and James belongs to him, and anyone trying to get to James will have to do battle with all of Michael’s ferocity in the attempt.  
  
The crowd applauds and cat-calls, drunkenly. “Right,” Michael announces, “we need to leave now.” James, lips wet and bright and incontrovertibly just-kissed, blushes but promptly adds, “Right now, yes, we have, er, _things_ to do,” and sneaks a hand into Michael’s pants. Michael kisses him again, and then returns the favor, in the elevator.  
  
After, as they’re lying in bed, James’s head pillowed on Michael’s shoulder and Michael’s arms securely around all the freckles, sticky and sweaty and utterly in love, Michael whispers, “we’re all right,” and James whispers back “yes,” into the night.  
  
James wakes up trying not to scream, hours after that.   
  
Michael’s awake, having privately vowed to himself that he’ll stay up all night, knowing it’s coming, hoping it isn’t. He notices the instant James goes rigid, body not lax in sleep but frozen in terror. He hears the devastated little sounds.  
  
He’s still got both arms around James, and in the split second between the noticing and the attempt to either hold on tighter or try to wake him—Michael’s not sure which is better, for someone this lost in nightmares and dread—James gasps and flinches everywhere, all those muscles shocked into wakefulness. Sits up, skin white and eyes dark under the satiny night-shadows of the room.  
  
Michael sits up too. Holds out his arms. James falls into them.   
  
James doesn’t apologize, this time. Doesn’t thank him. Doesn’t need to.  
  
After a while Michael starts singing to him, low-voiced and undemanding. Queen. Bryan Adams. Kansas. Dire Straits. Whatever comes to mind. When he gets to Toto, James smiles, and finds solid ground enough to hum along, if not quite sing.  
  
“Michael,” James whispers, when he finishes that one. That glorious Highland-tartan voice is frayed around the edges, but surprisingly whole despite the loosened threads.   
  
Michael kisses his forehead, pulls back to look at him. “Water? Coffee? I can turn up the heat if you want.” It’s on, but they’re naked, and it’s entirely possible that all those nightmare-chilled freckles need more support.  
  
“Maybe a little.” James shamelessly appreciates the view as Michael runs to the thermostat. Then lifts blankets to let him slide back in, and accepts the cuddling all over again. “Actually, though…something I wanted to tell you. I was thinking…”  
  
“Whenever you want. No hurry.” He can stay in this bed, arms right where they are now forever, if that’s what they need. The rational part of his brain points out that this isn’t terribly practical, whereupon the _rest_ of his brain—along with his heart and his arms and everyplace he’s currently touching James—tosses a very rude gesture that direction and refuses to listen.  
  
James doesn’t sound _too_ off-balance. Not perfectly steady; of course not, under the circumstances, but oddly less _un_ steady than Michael would’ve expected.   
  
The silk-and-onyx shadows, the shapes of the bed and dresser and television, hover like concerned ghosts. The room’s known James for three nights, counting this night. It can’t help but care.  
  
James, lying snug in his arms amid moonlight-pale cotton-blend sheets and pillowcases, smiles. Hooks a foot over Michael’s ankle, leg not quite long enough to reach further down. Michael, for no reason, for all the reasons, wants to cry.  
  
“I was thinking about what you said.” James fits an arm around his waist, palm and fingers sturdy and real where they rest on his back. Michael wonders again at how that familiar shape and weight can sink so deeply through his skin and muscles and bones, how that simple fact can leave an impression tattooed into every layer of his body: James, touching him. And he’s changed forever, just like that.   
  
He’s changed for the better. Because of James.  
  
“…what did I say?”  
  
“You remember.” Continuing to smile, small and wondering and maybe, maybe, Michael can’t quite believe it, but he wants to call that last emotion something like, yes, happy. “I told you once that it was better. That this was better. With you here.”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“It is,” James says, eyes unshakably certain when they meet Michael’s, pure vivid sapphire assurance in the silvery night. “You said we were all right. I love you, you love me, you’re here and I’m here, and this _is_ better, and we are.”

 

  
_I don’t know why my heart flips_   
_I only know it does_   
_I wonder why I love you_   
_I guess it’s just because_


End file.
